


wipe your hands across your mouth and laugh

by ohmygodwhy



Series: sweet pea's crush on fangs (and other stories) [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Families of Choice, Fred is a good dad, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pining, Self-Esteem Issues, like in a very vague sense, this is such a niche fic, u know it!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 01:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12694095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygodwhy/pseuds/ohmygodwhy
Summary: His brother hums, vaguely disappointed. “How about you? Find yourself a girl yet?”For half a split second, Sweet Pea thinks about the line of Fangs’ jaw and long fingers on a keyboard; he swallows the thoughts down quick, and they burn as they go.“No,” he says, and that burns, too.





	wipe your hands across your mouth and laugh

**Author's Note:**

> me: has an essay to prep for  
> also me: does this bullshit instead 
> 
> shoutout to julia for yelling w me about sweet pea and the serpents all the time. love these losers

 

Sweet Pea spends an unnecessary amount of time on his hair in the morning. That’s what Toni says, but Toni can do her hair in like two minutes and it’ll look great the whole day, so fuck Toni. Her hair gives her trouble sometimes, sure, but you’d never be able to tell. She got it dyed all cotton candy and now it looks like she put effort into it even if all she did was brush it.

Sweet Pea puts effort into it, but only enough that it doesn’t look like it. Like, it looks good, but not like he’s trying too hard, because he’s not. He just thinks you have to look the part. If you’re gonna ride a motorcycle, you have to look like the kind of person who rides a motorcycle. He doesn’t have his own yet, but his older brother lets him use his all the time. Now that he’s working at that factory outside of town, he doesn’t have very much time to keep it running anymore, so Sweet Pea does it for him.

Point is, he looks like the type of person to ride a motorcycle. So does Fangs, so does Toni, Ricky is maybe a little iffy but he usually drives his truck around anyways. FP’s kid does not look like the type of person to ride a motorcycle. The kid has one, just rode up on it one day because of course he has one, he’s FP Jones’ kid, but he doesn’t quite look the part. Maybe it’s the hat. He wears it under the helmet—and he wears a helmet, which Sweet Pea hasn’t done since he was like twelve. Toni always says he’s gonna get his ass killed, but she miraculously doesn’t even have to worry about helmet hair so again, fuck her.

It’s FP fuckin Jones’ kid, though, the one who helped Julian with his Shakespeare essay a while back and FP used to talk about like he was some kinda future genius ‘gonna change the world one day’ guy, who went to juvie when he was ten and was metal enough to sleep at the old drive-in during the hottest time of the year and then break into the rich kid school for a solid month to sleep there, too. Was a suspect in that rich boy murder case, the one that ended up being killed by his own dad—which only happened cause of who his dad was and where he was from. Point is, he’s heard a lot about him.

Other point is, he doesn't wanna be a Serpent. Other other point is, he’s friends with the guy who pulled a gun on him and Fangs and other other other point is, he had said the guy was a pussy, so Sweet Pea was gonna go easy on him, just shake him up a little, but then he pulled an actual gun on them, so now he isn’t so sure about Jones’ definition of pussy. He actually looked pretty upset when he found out, too, apologized for the guy and everything, said he’d been through some tough shit lately and he’d talk to him and all that. Making excuses for some Northside asshole.

Sweet Pea wonders how many excuses Jones has made over the years for the people who keep on fucking him over.

He bothers him, a little, the way Fangs used to bother him—still bothers him sometimes, but there’s no way he’d ever tell him that. Weird thing is, they’re two very different types of people—Fangs is all tough and muscle and soft eyes and hard, angular edges, the way he would expect FP Jones’ kid to be. FP Jones’ actual kid is nothing like that. Maybe that’s what bothers him: the fact that he’s not what he expected but he still acts all sure of himself, like of course this is just how he is, and fuck everyone for thinking any different.

Maybe it just bothers him that he never takes off that stupid hat, even when it’s pouring outside or the classroom is stifling as hell. Or that he’ll ask the Serpents to ask around about some guy they don’t know but won’t come hang with them afterwards. Or that he’s all over Toni but won’t give him the time of day. Whatever, he thinks, throwing an arm over Fangs’ shoulder, it doesn’t matter anyways.

He kicks the teeth out of one of the Ghoulies who beat the shit out of Jones the night before, because that’s what Serpents do for each other. He looks like shit with a black eye, and Sweet Pea’s gotten himself plenty of those over the years, so he gives the asshole two instead of one. Fangs takes care of the other one, and Jones looks all shocked when the Ghoulies walk into first period looking like they crawled out of a dumpster. He sits at their table at lunch and that’s that. Sometimes you gotta learn shit the hard way.

“You look like shit,” Sweet Pea says when Jones just folds his arms on the table and sits there.

He glances over at him and says, “Thanks. You should wash your hair sometime.”

“I wash it,” he says, maybe too quick, “It’s gel.”

“Then maybe you should tone down the gel.”

Toni rolls her eyes across the table, and says something about how much time Sweet Pea spends on his hair, which is embarrassing and unnecessary, but he stole her homework this morning to copy the answers, so maybe he deserves it.

Jones snorts at that, and Sweet Pea flicks a bottle cap at him.

“Least I don’t look like shit,” he says.

Jones rolls his eyes this time. Whatever, he thinks for the second time, wondering vaguely where Fangs is so he can throw his arm over his shoulder again, he’s dumb enough to stay late on campus when people are after him, so what does he know anyway.

 

When he’s a kid, maybe eight or nine, his older brother joins the Serpents. He had some friends who were Serpent, and a few who joined up. It started off as something fun to do with his life, because he wasn’t going to college, and it turned into a support system that they really needed, because their dad wasn’t super into that parenting stuff beyond the basics. It brought new danger, some rival gang members knocking on the door in the middle of the night once or twice, and he was in and out of juvie for a month or two a few times, but Serpents take care of each other’s families.

Sweet Pea had known he was gonna be a Serpent since he was like twelve, when he stopped wearing his helmet on his brother’s motorcycle because his brother had stopped wearing his. His brother was a Serpent, and he wanted to be like his brother, because his brother was tough and smart and respected on the streets.

He met Fangs right before he went through with the initiation. They did it together, almost. He taught Fangs how to ride a motorcycle, his brother watching on with his arms folded, smiling a little bit, and Fangs taught him how to throw a knife, which was cool as fuck.

He liked watching his fingers around the army knife—Fangs’ cousin was in the army—and the way they twirled it around like a pro, long and thick. He had big hands, Fangs did. Sweet Pea had big hands, too, obviously, but there was just something about them. He wanted to see if they were soft or not, if they were calloused, and whether they were warm or cold or somewhere in the middle.

He realized that this was not a normal thing to do when Fangs asked if there was something wrong with his hands one day. Sweet Pea had said no, and Fangs had tilted his head a little but dropped it and moved on, which meant that he probably never watched Sweet Pea’s fingers curl around the handle bars, which meant that no one else did that, which meant that it wasn’t a normal thing to do. Boys didn’t watch their best friend’s hands and want to hold them.

He stops watching, and decides he didn’t wanna hold them very much in the first place.

He finds himself watching Jones’ fingers, the way they dart around on his laptop keyboard, the four of them sitting in a back booth at Pop’s. It’s been easier to come here, lately, after that Northside guy got shot in the middle of the diner and bled all over the floor, because less people are willing to sit down and eat at the place some beloved member of society almost died. Stuff like that didn’t happen on this side of town.

Jones doesn’t type the way people in the movies type, all ordered and neat. Sweet Pea remembers elementary school, the hour they spent every other day in the shitty ‘computer lab’, and the typing lesson website they had them use one day. Put all your fingers in the proper place—each one on a key in the middle row, and move them around in the right way. Keep the position, but reach for the other keys. No one ever actually followed the rules, more excited to actually use a computer than anything, but Sweet Pea remembers thinking it was stupid.

Jones had obviously never followed the rules either, or at least forgot them. His fingers are all over the place, but he can still type pretty quick. Hits the delete button a lot, because sometimes his fingers trip over each other trying to hit the next letter, like his thought are moving too quickly for them to keep up. It’s weird.

“There something wrong with my hands?” Jones asks, not looking up from the laptop.

Sweet Pea blinks back into himself, and realizes his straw is still in his mouth.

“Uh, no,” he says, “I just spaced out.”

Jones hums in acknowledgement, reaches out to pick up a fry, and still doesn’t look up.

“You type weird,” he says after a moment of listening to Toni and Fangs’ conversation across the table. Something about calculus. Gross.

Jones finally looks away from the screen, quirking his eyebrows a little. “So what?”

“So nothing,” he says, “Just noticed.”

His eyebrows furrow a little more, like he doesn’t understand, and he shrugs, “Okay,” he says, and goes back to his weird typing.

Writers, Sweet Pea guesses. He thinks he remembers hearing about some writer once, who went off to live in the woods in a shitty cabin by himself for like a year, so he could _become one with nature_ and write philosophy or some shit. Weird group of people.

“What are you even writing?” he asks, because he hates not being a part of a conversation.

“None of your business,” Jones says without missing a beat.

“What, is it your diary or something? Thought people wrote that shit in journals.”

“You wanna read all my deep, dark secrets?” he asks sarcastically.

“What’s _your_ darkest secret, you punched a guy once? We’ve all punched people.”

“I know,” Jughead snorts, “You punched me. With brass fucking knuckles, cause you’re an asshole.”

Right, he thinks, he did. Initiation. His older brother had had rings on when he punched Sweet Pea, so it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Maybe he had hit him harder than he needed to. But he was kind-of friends (there had been an argument) with the kid who’d punched Sweet Pea and got off scot-free, and he suddenly wanted to join up after weeks of trying to keep one foot in either side of town, and Sweet Pea felt weird and off around him in ways he would rather not.

Fucker still got back up, either way. His hand was warm when he shook it, and only trembled a little bit. Maybe he had squeezed tighter than he needed to, and maybe he was a little too relieved that Jones had made it through, but that didn’t matter.

“You took my fucking milk at lunch today,” he says now, “You’re an asshole, too.”

“You weren’t gonna drink it,” is all Jones says.

“I was saving it for later.”

“You were about to throw it away.”

“That don’t mean you can just take it.”

“You took my entire piece of pizza, you can’t say shit.”

“Fangs took mine.”

“That don’t mean you can just take it,” he says, voice pitched the same way Sweet Pea’s was a moment ago. He’s smiling too, the asshole.

“Sharing is caring, ain’t you ever heard that?”

“Stealing isn’t sharing, asshole.”

Sweet Pea just laughs. He doesn’t know why he does, because nothing is funny, but the way he says it makes him laugh. It feels easier than any of their other conversations have been, and it’s about pizza, so maybe that’s why.

Jones just rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. Toni takes one of his fries, and Jones takes three of hers, and the conversation is over.

Later, Sweet Pea realizes he never found out what he was writing about. FP, drunk off his ass at the bar, had said his kid was writing a novel or something. Whatever, he thinks. He doesn’t really care.

 

It’s Saturday, and his brother has work off, so Sweet Pea is staying the weekend at his apartment. Second story, and not super nice, but he’s seen worse. He’s lived in worse.

His brother is making dinner. Heating up some canned Chef Boyardee, most likely, but it’s still good. They grew up on that stuff. Sweet Pea is talking about school, complaining about the same old shit—stupid teachers, annoying Northside kids, Scott being caught with weed during a police search for the thirty-second time in a row—and about Fangs learning this cool motorcycle trick the other day and almost crashing the bike, and about FP’s kid. He’s trying to be a little vague about that last part, because he doesn’t want his brother thinking bad about FP’s kid, because it’s FP’s kid and no one wants to piss FP off, even if he’s behind bars at the moment.

His brother laughs, even though he looks tired. He’s been looking real tired, lately. Hasn’t been around the bar as much, either. Sweet Pea likes to think it’s just stage in adult life or whatever because yeah, his current job kind of sucks and he isn’t where he always thought he would be, but his brother is tough, so he won’t let this get to him. Never let their dad get to him, and always shut Ghoulies or rich kids down before they could even think about it.

“How’s Toni?” he asks, voice pitched light and deliberate. Sweet Pea realizes he hasn’t mentioned her at all.

“Fine,” he says; he thinks he knows where this is going, “She has uh—” _a girlfriend,_ he almost says, thinking of the new girl she’s been texting all secret-like because she doesn’t like them knowing about her dating life, “She’s seeing someone.”

His brother hums, vaguely disappointed. “How about you? Find yourself a girl yet?”

For a half a split second, Sweet Pea thinks about the line of Fangs’ jaw and long fingers on a keyboard; he swallows the thoughts down quick, and they burn as they go.

“No,” he says, and that burns, too.

 

(It’s not that he doesn’t like gay people, or bi people, or any not-straight people. Toni is bi, and so is Ricky, and FP used to talk about his high school boyfriend all the time, and if anyone ever dared to say shit about them he’d be the first one to kick their ass. He doesn’t think any different of them at all.

It’s just. His brother. His brother doesn’t _hate_ anyone like that, but there’s just this—this certain _way_ he talks about them. Makes jokes that are supposed to be light but come just a little too mean, a little too serious. And he always asks if Sweet Pea is seeing anyone—seeing any girls—and if he has a girlfriend yet, he’s old enough, and his brother used to be the lady-killer of the whole place—South _and_ Northside girls. Sweet Pea’s heard all kinds of stories. Their dad, too, on a smaller level. So it must run in the family. Sweet Pea must have some girl on the side, should be out there charming hearts and shit.

The thing is, he’s not. He’s kissed two or three girls in his life. Maybe even four, if you count that one tiny kiss in sixth grade he did on a dare. And if it runs in the family, then what’s wrong with _him?_ Because it’s just him who isn’t feeling it.

His brother has always been bigger and meaner and tougher than him, and Sweet Pea wants to be just as big and mean and tough, maybe more, because he wants to make his brother proud of him--or at least doesn’t wanna make him disappointed. His brother is the strongest person he knows, and his situation is shit—and if Sweet Pea is less than that, where is he gonna end up? Somewhere worse than a shit apartment with a shittier job? Dead in a ditch somewhere?

His brother doesn’t hate them but he isn’t crazy about them, either, and Sweet Pea can’t imagine him ever finding out about—finding out that he’s—that he’s _different._ That he doesn’t like girls as much as he should. That he isn’t ever gonna be as good as him. That watching Fangs workout _does_ something to him. That he thinks about how warm Jones’ hand was when he shook it.

He could never hate Toni or Ricky or FP but thinking about himself the same way just doesn’t fit right. It feels like there’s something wrong with him. And he _knows_ it’s not wrong, but it just isn’t the _same_ with him and he doesn’t know _why._

He just knows that his brother can never know, and that Jones can never know and that Toni can never know and that Fangs, god forbid, can never know either.)

 

There’s this really shitty calc test that Sweet Pea definitely does not pass. He’s always been shit at math—he gets sixes and nines mixed up when he does the problems, and the teacher writes multiplication signs like x’s when there are already x’s in the problem, and his fives like S’s and his twos like backwards S’s and his eights like a broken snowman, the top and bottom not even touching, so he literally never knows what the fuck is going on.

They go out for slushies at QT outside of town after school like they usually do on Fridays, except Ricky’s old ass truck finally broke down, so Sweet Pea is borrowing his dad’s car instead. Driving makes him feel older, more mature, and he’s the one finally in control of the radio so he turns it up loud enough that Toni smacks him for it.

They stay out late enough that it’s dark by the time Sweet Pea drives them all home, because the test was so shitty that they bought seconds and went to the movies to erase it from their memories. The trailer park is just a few streets down from Toni’s house, so Jones winds up the last one car with him. He climbs up into the passenger's seat from the back, and doesn’t even apologize when his foot hits Sweet Pea’s shoulder. In retaliation, Sweet Pea drives, very carefully, into Jones’ trash can.

“You’re a really shitty driver.”

“I’m a great driver, I could’ve destroyed that thing,” Sweet Pea says; Jones rolls his eyes and shuts the door a little too hard to be an accident.

“Don’t slam my shit!” Sweet Pea calls, rolling down the window.

“Don’t hit _my_ shit!”

Sweet Pea honks at him and Jughead flips him off. He watches him search his pockets for his keys as he walks, and he’s halfway up the trailer steps when Sweet Pea calls, on instinct, “Yo, Jones,”

“Yeah?” He asks, glancing back.

“You down for next week?”

He thinks that maybe Jones looks surprised for a moment, but it’s hard to tell in the dark. Either way, he says, “Sure.”

“Cool,” Sweet Pea says, not sure why he cares so much. “See you ‘round.”

 

They don’t actually go next Friday, because his dad needs the car back and his brother is using the bike and Ricky’s truck is still broken and they can’t all fit on one bike and no one wants to walk. Instead, they try to scrape up enough money to fix Ricky’s truck.

When they can’t quite scrape up enough and they don’t wanna go to The Adults for help, Jones suggests some Northside dad of the ex-Red Circle guy. Which, what the fuck.

“What the fuck,” Sweet Pea says.

“He knows how to fix trucks,” Jones says, “He used to help my dad with his.”

“You talkin’ about that guy FP always used to talk about?” Ricky asks, like he’s actually considering it.

 _“God,_ he talked about him with you, too?”

“Fred-something right?”

“Fred Andrews, yeah. He and my dad go way back. I stayed with him for a while, too, he was real good to me.”

Ricky is silent for a minute. “You really think he’ll do it for free?”

“Yeah, for sure,” Jones says quickly, “he’s a nice guy.”

“He’s a Northsider,” Toni says, which _thank you_ , “How nice can he be?”

“He’s one of the best people I know,” Jones says, like he’s serious, like some Northside dad would really be willing to do anything for them.

Ricky shrugs, “If he’ll fix my shit for free, I'm down”

“Wait, for real?” Sweet Pea asks, which is weird, because he’s very rarely the voice of reason in the group. He’s self-aware enough to know that.

“We don’t have the money for the shop.”

“Free fix,” Jones says, “You don’t even have to come.”

“I’m gonna come,” Sweet Pea says, because he can’t have Jones thinking he’s scared of some old guy.

“Okay,” Jones says simply, “Lemme just call him and see if he’s busy real quick.”

“You’re absolutely sure?” Ricky asks again.

Jones nods, “Trust me on this.”

 

The Andrews guy ends up saying _yes, sure, bring a bunch of Southside kids over to my perfect house so I can help fix their ugly truck but then actually call the police on them_ , or something like that. He’s pretty sure the only reason Ricky agreed to it is because it’s Jones who suggested it, and because this is apparently FP’s old high school boyfriend. He wonders why they split, before he reminds himself he doesn’t care; it ain’t any of his business.

For all his talk about Northside bullshit, Sweet Pea hasn’t actually been to the better parts of town very often. He drives through them a lot, sure, but he doesn’t make a habit of hanging around, not since the Drive-In got shut down.

All the houses look like, almost exactly the same, just pretty big, with nice lawns and big garages and pretty windows and shit. He’s pretty sure there used to be a fucking mansion on the top of the hill, but something happened and now it’s all ash and rubble. He thinks he heard Jones say that it belonged to the guy who killed his own kid, and it that got burned down. Serves them right.

The house they pull up to isn’t the biggest on the block, but it’s still nice looking. Has a cool porch with a chair or two. Ricky’s truck, pulling up the driveway, and on its very last little bit of willpower, looks remarkably out of place. Sweet Pea climbs out of the trunk, and feels the same way. He’s pretty sure there’s someone looking out through the blinds next door.

Fred Andrews hobbles out of his house with a crutch under one arm, wearing a flannel and pajama bottoms, and looking like he shouldn’t be walking around.

“What happened to him?” Sweet Pea mumbles.

“He got shot, asshole, I told you on the way over,” Jones mumbles back, and then goes to help the guy down the porch steps, which ok. Maybe he was more zoned out than he thought. He blames it on how fake everything looks.  

Plus, Sweet Pea got stabbed once. This Andrews guy isn’t all that special.

He is nice, though. Nice for a Northside guy, at least. It’s hard to imagine that _this_ is the guy FP used to talk about banging in the school bathroom and getting so drunk he passed out on someone else’s roof once, but you never know, he guesses. He’s heard the _his eyes twinkled under the gym lights during the senior dance_ story more times than he can count. Mr ‘ _Call me Fred’_ Andrews’ eyes don’t look so twinkly right now; mostly he just looks tired.

He asks all their names, and doesn’t blink once when hears Sweet Pea’s. Jughead grew up around the guy, so he guesses he’s used to weird names. He acts like he actually wants to help and not just because Jones asked him to. Props his crutch up and leans over the hood of Ricky’s truck like he was made to it. Says they’re welcome to anything in the fridge, just please let the chicken marinate ‘cause he’s gonna cook it later, and that they can stay for dinner if they want to. Sweet Pea eats every single Ritz cracker in the pantry—and there are two boxes—just because he can, and because that Archie kid seems like the kind of person who’d buy them for himself, and fuck that Archie kid.

Fred mentions him, too, in a lower voice that only he and Jones were probably supposed to hear, asks if everything’s okay, because he hasn’t been around in a while and Archie’s been quiet about the whole thing and did you guys have some kind of fight, Jug?

Jones says it doesn’t matter, and that Archie has stuff he should probably tell him himself, and that he doesn’t wanna talk about it.

Sweet Pea realizes two things: that Mr Fred Andrews calls him Jug, and that Mr Fred Andrews doesn’t know that his kid was waving a gun around the Southside like a fucking crazy person.

For a split second, he thinks about spilling, about shattering this nice guy’s world and telling him that his son isn’t as good as he thinks and it’s his own damn fault. Then he thinks about Ricky biting his lip and looking all serious, nodding as Andrews gestures to pumps and breaks and shit and about how upset Jones would be, and decides it’s not worth it. He’s getting free food out of this. No reason to ruin that.

Besides, he does help fix the truck. And he doesn’t ask for any money, either. They don’t end up staying for dinner, because they’ve gotten a few weird looks from people already and Jones doesn’t wanna run into Archie, and Sweet Pea thinks that if he saw the guy, he might hit him on pure instinct. Fred just smiled and says it was a pleasure to meet all of them.

Shady fucker. Sweet Pea tells him as much, and Fred Andrews just laughs.

 

“Hey,” Jones says later, sliding into the booth next to him; the others are trying to talk Pop into giving them a free milkshake, “If you ever want someone to talk to, Mr A’s your best bet. He’s not exactly the straightest tool in the shed—or, knife in the drawer, if that’s more your thing.”

“Fuck makes you think I need someone to _talk_ to?” he says, heart beating just a bit faster at the implications because what the fuck, what the fuck, how does he know. Jughead, on the other hand, looks calm, like he’d expected as much.

He just shrugs, “Experience. I’m not gay,” he adds when Sweet Pea starts to say something, “but I—I don’t think I’m that into girls. Took me a while to realize. Mr A was a lotta help.”

That’s all he says, claps him on the back, still stilted and unsure, and walks away to go steal some of Ricky’s fries. Not gay but not into girls. Cryptic fuck.

He realizes, somewhere in the back of his mind, that maybe he’s being hypocritical. He’s not sure if he’s that into girls, either—he likes them fine enough, thinks they’re pretty and he’s even kissed a few and he didn’t not enjoy it—but he can’t imagine calling himself—calling himself gay. Not out loud. Can’t bring himself to think it. So if Jones has trouble admitting it or whatever the hell, that’s his own problem.

“There’s more than just straight and gay, y’know,” Toni says when he tells her about it later; just about what Jughead said, not any of the other shit, “I, for example—“

“Yeah, I know,” Sweet Pea says, “You swing for both.”

“There’s more than just that, too, though,” she says, boxing an answer on her physics homework; he’d have to ask for those answers later.

“Literally what else could there be.”

Toni just shrugs, reminding him a little too much of Jones, “Sexuality’s a spectrum. Look it up sometime.”

 

(Sweet Pea doesn’t look it up. He tells himself it’s because he just doesn’t care.)

 

He does end up going to talk to Mr Andrews, when throwing an arm over Fangs’ shoulder and listening to the sound of him laughing gets to be a little too much, or maybe not enough, he doesn’t know.

Plays it off as something cool, a quick hey, is Jones around? when he knows he isn’t, so he’ll get invited in. _Mr A_ is either real nice or real stupid, just letting him in like that, when no one else is around. Even offers him a drink, after Jones doesn’t miraculously turn up.

Sweet Pea says he doesn’t take drinks from strangers and Fred just nods and says that’s smart of him. He can’t tell if he’s making fun of him or not. He decides to go with not, because if Fred is making fun of him he’ll never be able to say what he needs to.

“So, uh,” he starts. Stops just as quick. Fred seems to notice the mood shift, because he closes the fridge where he’d been looking for strawberries, and glances over.

“So I,” he starts again, “I heard that you were—that you could—that I could talk. To you. About stuff.”

“Stuff?”

“Yeah,” he nods, looks down at the fingerprints on the glass Mr Andrews handed him, “Like, just confusing stuff.”

“Confusing stuff?” Fred repeats, like he doesn’t quite understand. A beat, and sudden clarity. The clarity makes him afraid.

“Never mind,” he says quickly, “This was dumb, you don’t even know who I am, I’m just gonna—“

“No, hey,” Fred says softly, steps forwards but doesn’t reach for him, like he knows not to touch him, “Sweet Pea, right? You were with Ricky when he brought his truck over. Jug’s told me a lot about you.”

He thinks about the whole entire plethora of shit Jones could’ve told him, right down to that time he pulled a knife on his kid, and winces.

“Nothing bad,” Fred assures, “He says you’re his friend; any friend of his is a friend of mine. I don’t know how helpful I’ll be, but my door’s always open.”

“For real?” he asks, suspicious and feeling remarkably out of his depth.

“For real.”

“You won’t judge shit I say?”

He gestures to the crutch under his arm and the robe he’s wearing, “Don’t have much ground to stand on if I wanted to.”

“You’re gonna think it’s stupid.”

“If it’s bothering you, it isn’t stupid.”

“Okay,” he says, “Okay.”

“You wanna sit down? My back is killing me.”

“Oh, uh, sure.”

They sit down on the big couch in the nice living room, all brightly lit and colorful, but in a tasteful way. Right now it just makes his stomach turn. Reminds him of how much he’s not supposed to be here.

Mr Andrews looks like he knows exactly what he’s going to say, but asks, “So what’s the problem?” just to be nice.

Sweet Pea wonders again if he’s really that goddamn obvious, and starts talking.

 

**Author's Note:**

> jug's weird typing inspired by my own. dont type slow but i also cant do tht 100 words per minute shit rip. also ricky is [this boy](http://riverdale.wikia.com/wiki/Season_2_Minor_Characters#Young_Serpent/)  
> (when will they bring him back...)
> 
> comment to keep me young and radiant in the week to come i have So much going on
> 
> also come hmu on [tumblr](http://gaynasas.tumblr.com/) to talk abt these kids


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